A musical that examines black identity in the 1901 Worlds Fair Amma Y. GharteyTagoe Kootin
The archive.
One may envision rooms and shelves
stocked with boxes
and cartons of old stuff.
And yet, for those who are
patient enough to dig through it,
the archive provides
the precious opportunity
to touch the past,
to feel and learn from the experiences
of once-living people who now seem
dead and buried deeply in the archive.
But what if there was a way
to bring the archive to life?
Jon Michael Reese: “The world
is thinking wrong about race.”
Melissa Joyner: “This country insists
upon judging the Negro.”
JMR: “Because it does not know.”
AYGTK: What if one could make it breathe?
MJ: “By his lowest
and most vicious representatives.”
AYGTK: Speak.
JMR: “An honest, straightforward exhibit.”
AYGTK: And even sing to us,
so that the archive
becomes accessible to everyone.
What would performing
the archive look like?
A performance that is not
simply based on a true story
but one that allows us
to come face-to-face
with things we thought
were once dead and buried.
(Piano music)
This is what “At Buffalo,”
a new musical we’re developing,
is all about.
Using collections
from over 30 archival institutions,
“At Buffalo” performs the massive archive
of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition,
the first World’s Fair
of the 20th century,
held in Buffalo, New York.
Now, if you’ve heard of this fair,
it might be because this is where
then-US president, William McKinley,
was assassinated.
For nearly 17 years,
I’ve stayed inside the gates
and the archive of this fair,
not only because of that story
but because of a real
life-and-death racial drama
that played out on the fairgrounds.
Here, in a place that was like
Disney World, the Olympics,
carnivals, museums, all in one,
there were three conflicting displays
of what it meant to be black
in the United States.
The archive says white showmen presented
a savage black origin
in the form of 98 West
and Central Africans,
living and performing war dances
in a recreated village
called Darkest Africa.
And across the street,
a happy slave life,
in the form of 150 Southern
black performers,
picking cotton,
singing and dancing minstrel shows
in a recreated antebellum attraction
called Old Plantation.
As a response,
the black Buffalo community championed
the third display of blackness:
the Negro Exhibit.
Codesigned by African American
scholar W.E.B. Du Bois,
it curated photographs,
charts, books and more,
to show black Americans
as a high-achieving race,
capable of education and progress.
When I first encountered this story,
I understood from my own life experience
what was at stake to have members
of the African diaspora
see each other like this.
For me, as the child of immigrant parents
from Ghana, West Africa,
born in the American South,
raised in Manhattan, Kansas,
(Laughter)
and having attended the same
elite school as Du Bois,
I could see that the Buffalo fair
effectively pitted
the black Northerner
against the Southerner,
the educated against the uneducated,
and the African American
against the African.
And I wanted to know:
How did these three distinct groups
of black folk navigate this experience?
Unfortunately, the archive
had answers to questions like this
underneath racial caricature,
conflicting information
and worse – silence.
(Piano music)
Still, I could hear musical melodies
and see dance numbers
and the rhythms of the words
coming off the pages
of old newspaper articles.
And learning that this World’s Fair
had music playing everywhere
on its fairgrounds,
I knew that live, immersive,
spectacular musical theater,
with the latest technologies of our time,
is the closest experience that can bring
the archival story of the 1901 fair
out of boxes and into life.
Stories, like Tannie and Henrietta,
a husband and wife vaudeville duo in love
who become at odds over performing
these “coon” minstrel shows
while striving for their
five-dollar-a-week dream
in the Old Plantation attraction.
Like African businessman John Tevi,
from present-day Togo,
who must outwit the savage rules
of the human zoo
in which he has become trapped.
And stories like Mary Talbert,
a wealthy leader
of the black Buffalo elite,
who must come to terms
with the racial realities
of her home town.
MJ: “The dominant race in this country
insists upon judging the Negro
by his lowest and most
vicious representatives.”
AYGTK: Like Old Plantation
and Darkest Africa.
MJ: “… instead of by the more
intelligent and worthy classes.”
AYGTK: When fair directors
ignored Mary Talbert
and the local black Buffalo community’s
request to participate in the fair,
newspapers say that Mary Talbert
and her club of educated
African American women
held a rousing protest meeting.
But the details of that meeting,
even down to the fiery speech she gave,
were not fully captured in the archive.
So, “At Buffalo” takes the essence
of Mary’s speech
and turns it into song.
(All singing) We must, we are unanimous.
We must, we are unanimous.
MJ: We’ve got something to show –
we’re going to teach a lesson in Buffalo.
It would benefit the nation
to see our growth since emancipation.
Colored people should be represented
in this Pan-American exposition,
it would benefit the nation
to see our growth since emancipation.
(All singing) They made a great mistake
not to appoint someone from the race.
We must, we are unanimous.
We must, we are unanimous.
We must, we are unanimous.
AYGTK: Mary Talbert successfully demands
that the Negro Exhibit come to the fair.
And to have the Negro Exhibit in Buffalo
means that the musical must tell the story
behind why Du Bois cocreated it …
and why Mary and the black elite
felt it was urgently needed.
JMR: “The world is thinking
wrong about race.
They killed Sam Hose
for who they thought he was.
And more men like him, every day,
more Negro men, like him, taken apart.
And after that – that red ray …
we can never be the same.
(Singing) A red ray
[A man hunt in Georgia]
cut across my desk
[Mob after Hose;
he will be lynched if caught]
the very day
Sam’s hands were laid to rest.
Can words alone withstand the laws unjust?
[Escape seems impossible]
Can words alone withstand the violence?
Oh, no, oh.
[Burned alive]
[Sam Hose is lynched]
Oh, no, oh.
[His body cut in many pieces]
Oh, no, oh.
[Burned at the Stake]
[Ten Cents Slice Cooked Liver.]
[Fight for souvenirs.]
(Both singing) Who has read the books?
Our numbers and statistics look small
against the page.
The crisis has multiplied.
Our people are lynched and died.
Oh, Lord.
Something must change.
AYGTK: Something must change.
“At Buffalo” reveals
how the United States today
stands at similar crossroads
as 1901 America.
Just as the name of Sam Hose
filled newspapers back then,
today’s media carries the names of:
JMR: Oscar Grant.
MJ: Jacqueline Culp.
Pianist: Trayvon Martin.
AYGTK: Sandra Bland.
And too many others.
The 1901 fair’s legacies persist
in more ways than we can imagine.
MJ: Mary Talbert
and the National Association
of Colored Women
started movements against lynching
and the myth of black criminality
just as black women today
started Black Lives Matter.
JMR: And some of the same
people who fought for
and created the Negro Exhibit,
including Du Bois,
came to Buffalo,
four years after the fair,
to start the Niagara Movement,
which set the groundwork
for the creation of the NAACP.
AYGTK: It’s not just black folks
who had a peculiar experience
at the 1901 fair.
An official handbook informed fair-goers:
MJ: “Please remember:”
JMR: “… once you get inside the gate,”
AYGTK: “… you are a part of the show.”
Performing the archive in “At Buffalo”
allows audiences to ask themselves,
“Are we still inside the gates,
and are we all still part of the show?”
(Music ends)
(Applause and cheers)